Could anyone imagine Clinton honoring their political enemy like this?All they have to do when she runs against Bush is replay this image of him honoring her.

I don't know what good it does, but I share your reaction to this. We live in an anti-liberty tsunami. How is liberty going in your business, Doc? Coercive Paternalism might be a better descriptor than Liberty. Though she was only Sec of State, these are the policies she is working to advance too. The results are a human tragedy.

Hillary was negligent in her own duties, failing to answer the security challenge in Benghazi and a co-conspirator to cover that up after the fact. That is in addition to her prior, "long, sordid, and often criminal history". But she wins the liberty award. Unbelievable.

"Clinton traveled to 112 countries"

That is how we measure success in 2013? These were the places where "Chris" Stevens could not reach her. One million miles on the taxpayer dime and liberty moved backwards around the globe on her watch.

But the elites honor the elites for "Liberty", while ignoring the loss of liberty of the people.

Charlotte’s revulsion over Huma Abedin’s calculated “stand by your man” routine is surely right. Still, it is amazing, as we speculate about Ms. Abedin’s political future, that the elephant in the room goes unnoticed, or at least studiously unmentioned.

Sorry to interrupt the Best Enabler of a Sociopath Award ceremony but, to recap, Ms. Abedin worked for many years at a journal that promotes Islamic-supremacist ideology that was founded by a top al-Qaeda financier, Abdullah Omar Naseef. Naseef ran the Rabita Trust, a formally designated foreign terrorist organization under American law. Ms. Abedin and Naseef overlapped at the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs (JMMA) for at least seven years. Throughout that time (1996–2003), Ms. Abdein worked for Hillary Clinton in various capacities.

Ms. Abedin’s late father, Dr. Zyed Abedin, was recruited by Naseef to run the JMMA in Saudi Arabia. The journal was operated under the management of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, a virulently anti-Semitic and sharia-supremacist organization. When Dr. Abedin died, editorial control of the journal passed to his wife, Dr. Saleha Mahmood Abedin — Huma’s mother.

Saleha Abedin is closely tied to the Muslim Brotherhood and to supporters of violent jihad. Among other things, she directs an organization – the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child. The IICWC, through its parent entity (the International Islamic Council for Dawa and Relief), is a component of the Union for Good (also known as the Union of Good), another formally designated terrorist organization. The Union for Good is led by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the notorious Muslim Brotherhood jurist who has issued fatwas calling for the killing of American military and support personnel in Iraq as well as suicide bombings in Israel. (As detailed here, the Obama White House recently hosted Qaradawi’s principal deputy, Sheikh Abdulla bin Bayyah, who also endorsed the fatwa calling for the killing of U.S. troops and personnel in Iraq.)

Like Sheikh Qaradawi, who helped write the charter for the IICWC, Saleha Abedin is an influential sharia activist who has, for example, published a book called Women in Islam that claims man-made laws enslave women. It reportedly provides sharia justifications for such practices as female-genital mutilation, the death penalty for apostates from Islam, the legal subordination of women, and the participation of women in violent jihad. Dr. Abedin has nevertheless been hailed in the progressive press as a “leading voice on women’s rights in the Muslim world” (to quote Foreign Policy). What they never quite get around to telling you is that this means “women’s rights” in the repressive sharia context.

Back to daughter Huma. In the late mid to late Nineties, while she was an intern at the Clinton White House and an assistant editor at JMMA, Ms. Abedin was a member of the executive board of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at George Washington University, heading its “Social Committee.” The MSA, which has a vast network of chapters at universities across North America, is the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood’s infrastructure in the United States. Obviously, not every Muslim student who joins the MSA graduates to the Brotherhood — many join for the same social and networking reasons that cause college students in general to join campus organizations. But the MSA does have an indoctrination program, which Sam Tadros describes as a lengthy process of study and service that leads to Brotherhood membership — a process “designed to ensure with absolute certainty that there is conformity to the movement’s ideology and a clear adherence to its leadership’s authority.” The MSA gave birth to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the largest Islamist organization in the U.S. Indeed the MSA and ISNA consider themselves the same organization. Because of its support for Hamas (a designated terrorist organization that is the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch), ISNA was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, in which several Hamas operatives were convicted of providing the terrorist organization with lavish financing.

As I’ve recounted before, the MSA chapter to which Ms. Abedin belonged at George Washington University

has an intriguing history. In 2001 [to be clear, that is after Ms. Abedin had graduated from GWU], its spiritual guide was . . . Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda operative who was then ministering to some of the eventual 9/11 suicide-hijackers. Awlaki himself had led the MSA chapter at Colorado State University in the early nineties. As Patrick Poole has demonstrated, Awlaki is far from the only jihadist to hone his supremacist ideology in the MSA’s friendly confines. In the eighties, Wael Jalaidan ran the MSA at the University of Arizona. He would soon go on to help Osama bin Laden found al-Qaeda; he also partnered with the Abedin family’s patron, Abdullah Omar Naseef, to establish the [aforementioned] Rabita Trust — formally designated as a terrorist organization under U.S. law due to its funding of al-Qaeda.

Ms. Abedin served as one of Secretary of State Clinton’s top staffers and advisers at the State Department. As I’ve previously detailed, during that time, the State Department strongly supported abandoning the federal government’s prior policy against official dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood. State, furthermore, embraced a number of Muslim Brotherhood positions that undermine both American constitutional rights and our alliance with Israel. To name just a few manifestations of this policy sea change:

The State Department had an emissary in Egypt who trained operatives of the Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations in democracy procedures. The State Department announced that the Obama administration would be “satisfied” with the election of a Muslim Brotherhood–dominated government in Egypt. Secretary Clinton personally intervened to reverse a Bush-administration ruling that barred Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the Brotherhood’s founder and son of one of its most influential early leaders, from entering the United States. The State Department collaborated with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of governments heavily influenced by the Brotherhood, in seeking to restrict American free-speech rights in deference to sharia proscriptions against negative criticism of Islam. The State Department excluded Israel, the world’s leading target of terrorism, from its “Global Counterterrorism Forum,” a group that brings the United States together with several Islamist governments, prominently including its co-chair, Turkey — which now finances Hamas and avidly supports the flotillas that seek to break Israel’s blockade of Hamas. At the forum’s kickoff, Secretary Clinton decried various terrorist attacks and groups; but she did not mention Hamas or attacks against Israel — in transparent deference to the Islamist governments, which echo the Brotherhood’s position that Hamas is not a terrorist organization and that attacks against Israel are not terrorism. The State Department and the Obama administration waived congressional restrictions in order to transfer $1.5 billion dollars in aid to Egypt after the Muslim Brotherhood’s victory in the parliamentary elections. The State Department and the Obama administration waived congressional restrictions in order to transfer millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian territories notwithstanding that Gaza is ruled by the terrorist organization Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch. The State Department and the administration hosted a contingent from Egypt’s newly elected parliament that included not only Muslim Brotherhood members but a member of the Islamic Group (Gamaa al-Islamiyya), which is formally designated as a foreign terrorist organization. The State Department refused to provide Americans with information about the process by which it issued a visa to a member of a designated terrorist organization, about how the members of the Egyptian delegation were selected, or about what security procedures were followed before the delegation was allowed to enter our country. On a trip to Egypt, Secretary Clinton pressured General Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of the military junta then governing the country, to surrender power to the parliament dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the then–newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, a top Brotherhood official. She also visited with Morsi; immediately after his victory, Morsi had proclaimed that his top priorities included pressuring the United States to release the Blind Sheikh. Quite apart from the Brotherhood’s self-proclaimed “grand jihad” to destroy the United States . . . the group’s supreme guide, Mohammed Badie, publicly called for jihad against the United States in an October 2010 speech. After it became clear the Brotherhood would win the parliamentary election, Badie said the victory was a stepping stone to “the establishment of a just Islamic caliphate.”

As more recent events remind us, this is not an exhaustive account of Obama-administration coziness with the Muslim Brotherhood. It is just some of the lowlights.

When a handful of House conservatives tried to draw the attention of the State Department’s inspector general to some of these matters – wondering how on earth someone with Ms. Abdein’s background could have qualified for a top-secret security clearance – they were castigated by the Obama White House and the Beltway Republican establishment. As reaffirmed in the last 24 hours, Ms. Abedin’s connections to prominent Islamic-supremacist figures and groups are deemed unsuitable for public discussion – Egyptians may be able to eject the Muslim Brotherhood, but in today’s Washington it is raising questions about the Muslim Brotherhood that gets you run out of town.

Naturally, what did get Washington chattering was a scandal far more typical in Clinton circles — the lucrative arrangement Ms. Abedin struck with Mrs. Clinton’s State Department that allowed her, after returning from maternity leave, to draw a $135,000 State Department salary while remaining in New York, not actually working at Foggy Bottom, and moonlighting as a “strategic consultant” for an outfit called Teneo – founded by Bill Clinton’s chum Doug Band.

What a racket. The marriage to Huma Abedin, a Clinton insider, enables Anthony Weiner to resurrect a debased career and deflect attention from his psychotic antics even as he continues them. The marriage to Anthony Weiner, a prominent Jewish progressive, enables Huma Abedin to deflect attention from her associations with various Islamic supremacists even as, during her tenure as a top State Department official, American policy embraces Islamic supremacists.

Bari Weiss: If Huma and Hillary Were Emailing...'I only wish Anthony could have channeled a bit more of Bill . . . Say hi to Big Dog for me.'

By BARI WEISS

Dear Hillary,

I'm listening to "Stand by Your Man" on repeat and baking cookies. Also considering joining Twitter—@MrsCarlosDanger has a real ring to it, don't you think?

Kidding.

Seriously, just when you think it can't get worse, here comes another 20-something from another dank corner of the Internet. And this woman— her last name is Leathers, you can't make this stuff up—is straight out of "Jersey Shore" with that above-the-lip piercing. Except she's from Indiana. It's like a vast fright-wing conspiracy.

Remind me to cancel those private Zumba lessons.

The good news is that Anthony's hanging on: Sure, he took a hit in the polls, but nobody's loving Christine Quinn—her favorables are terrible. And before Tuesday, we had out-raised every other Democrat in the field. Your blessing has been gold. Can't thank you enough.

Let me know if you can swing by. Anthony's not much in evidence; would love to talk next steps.

Yours,

H***

Huma dear:

I'm sorry I can't meet up. Bill isn't thrilled by the Anthony comparisons, so it's best for me to lie low. Anyway, re: Tuesday's presser. You were masterful.

Our phone's ringing off the hook with donors asking when Weiner's dropping out and Abedin's getting in. Perfect combination of stoic and vulnerable, dignified and authentic, they say. Only you could pull off that "whole lotta therapy" line. Bravo.

Did you see what Tina Brown tweeted? "Huma for mayor—she has all the qualities he doesn't." Same with Nate Silver: "Huma should have run for mayor; she'd win in a landslide." I'll have someone put in a call to get him working on some numbers.

Hang in there. As Rahm would have said if he really understood politics: Never let a soul-crushing marital crisis go to waste. This is far from over.

More soon. I'm bingeing on "House of Cards." Again.

Hillary***

Dearest Hill:

What can I say? I learned from the best. Your '92 interview on "60 Minutes" was my game tape. Anthony's communications team thought it would be best for me to stay home this week, but when I watched you deliver that line—"I'm sitting here because I love him and I respect him"—I realized what I had to do for myself. Anthony, too, of course. My "I love him, I have forgiven him, I believe in him" bit is in every article right now.

Enlarge ImageimageimageGetty Images

Huma Abedin and her former boss.

I only wish Anthony could have channeled a bit more of Bill. A few tried to string him up for this line: "In many ways, what happened today is something that, frankly, had happened before, but it doesn't represent all that much that is new." Let's just say he couldn't get away with it like Bill did when he told Steve Kroft "anyone who's listening gets the drift of it." But you've always told me that you've got to work with what you've got. He'll learn.

Someone on TV Wednesday said you're the "pro" of taking an "embarrassing situation and owning it and winning in the long run."

Couldn't have put it better myself. My question now is how long is the long run.

I wasn't thinking of running until 2017, but our story is bigger than the royal baby so I'm reconsidering. Thanks for having Silver look into those figures. (He's going to ESPN? Really? Why?)

What did you think of my Harper's Bazaar spread? I cringed at the headline, "The Good Wife," but now I'm thinking it's great positioning for me. Nice pushback to Anthony's brother telling the New York Times that I'm a political animal.

Say hi to Big Dog for me. Curious if he has any advice.

Gratefully yours,

Huma***

Hum:

Bill says to stick it out. This will fade if Anthony can get through this week. And he can—just keep him glad-handing in Staten Island, outdoors, where it's bright and there's no Wi-Fi. Get him talking about how he grew up in a hardworking middle-class family in Brooklyn. It's the economy, stupid. Etc. If folks think Anthony's going to make rent cheaper, they won't think twice about his utter lack of personal loyalty or honesty. I know whereof I speak.

You're less than 50 days to the primary. It's a weak field, and if Anthony sticks to the issues beside his sympathetic bride, he'll win. And in the general, who are voters going to pick? A Republican? Give me a break.

Once he's in City Hall, your path is clear. I'll give his office the aides we discussed and it'll be a perfect satellite for Hillaryland. It will be discreet, of course—no Hillary 2016 wall banners just yet. But you can meet with donors on the down low and then your path will be up to you.

Huma for mayor? Or my old Senate seat? Selfishly I'd love to have you in the White House, but it will be your call. I never make a promise I can't keep.

No question she must have gotten an A in her body language class. Shoulders back, chin up, straight erect spine, one hand at side while other gestures with authority. But Diane Lane, I hardly think so.

"and can be quite hot"; That is what I mean. Does anyone think Hillary can be quite hot? And as I thought. Except for some exceptions the crat machine was silent about Weiner until comparisons with the Clintons began. Now the Clinton "machine" will dispose of them. Including Alexrod who is going to protect Hillary. And as the article below points out, who is Huma. She is nobody next to the former first lady and sec of state and senator. There is simply nothing to compare the two with:

Bill and Hillary Clinton are angry with efforts by mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner and his campaign to compare his Internet sexcapades — and his wife Huma Abedin’s incredible forgiveness — to the Clintons’ notorious White House saga, The Post has learned.

“The Clintons are upset with the comparisons that the Weiners seem to be encouraging — that Huma is ‘standing by her man’ the way Hillary did with Bill, which is not what she in fact did,’’ said a top state Democrat.

Huma Abedin with Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State at a House Appropriations Committee hearing in 2011.Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton in 2008.Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner on their wedding day. Bill Clinton officiated the nups in the gardens of the Long Island castle.

Huma Abedin with Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State at a House Appropriations Committee hearing in 2011.

Weiner and his campaign aides have explicitly referred to the Clintons as they privately seek to convince skeptical Democrats that voters can back Weiner despite his online sexual antics — just as they supported then-President Bill Clinton in the face of repeated allegations of marital betrayals.

“The Clintons are pissed off that Weiner’s campaign is saying that Huma is just like Hillary,’’ said the source. “How dare they compare Huma with Hillary? Hillary was the first lady. Hillary was a senator. She was secretary of state.”

A longtime Hillary aide and Clinton friend, Abedin’s surprisingly unequivocal support of her husband after his bombshell admission Tuesday that he engaged in salacious online sexting well after he resigned in disgrace from Congress in 2011 left the Clintons stunned, continued the source.

“Hillary didn’t know Huma would do this whole stand-by-your-man routine, and that’s one of the reasons the Clintons are distancing themselves from all this nonsense,’’ the source said.

Huma Abedin with Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State at a House Appropriations Committee hearing in 2011.Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton in 2008.Huma Abedin and Anthony Weiner on their wedding day. Bill Clinton officiated the nups in the gardens of the Long Island castle.

In the view of many Democrats, the Weiners have also alluded more subtly to the Clintons.

For instance, Abedin, with her husband at her side, declared last week, “Our marriage, like many others, has had its ups and its downs.’’

“Who didn’t think Huma was referring to the Clintons when she said that?’’ asked another prominent Democrat.

Worried about the potential impact on Hillary’s likely run for president in 2016, the political power couple has begun aggressively distancing itself from the crippled mayoral contender, according to sources.

Meanwhile, at least one prominent Hillary Rodham Clinton political operative was described as close to “going public’’ with a sharp criticism of Weiner — in order to send the message that the Clintons, fearing longtime damage to Hillary, want him out of the mayor’s race. (That would be someone other than former Clinton White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, who said yesterday that she was sure the Clintons wanted Weiner out of the race.)

With all the explosive ammunition Republicans have to fire at Weiner and a handful of other disgraced Democrats, GOP activists expected Senate co-leader Dean Skelos and Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb to unload at least a few critical comments.

Instead, there’s been total silence from the state’s two top elected Republicans — in yet another example of the collapse of the state’s two-party system.

Skelos “couldn’t care less about what’s going on with the Democrats. He’s just focused on . . . sending out meaningless tweets,’’ said a Republican strategist.*****

John Hinderacker at Powerline has a lengthy piece on the Hillary media wave today. The funny thing about Hillary Clinton is how vastly her reputation exceeds her accomplishments. In reality, the only reason anyone has heard of her is that she married Bill Clinton. Otherwise, she would have toiled away as an obscure, reasonably competent if obnoxious lawyer. She was a relatively unpopular First Lady who is best remembered for being embarrassed by her husband’s serial infidelities. She served a brief term as a Senator from New York, a role in which she achieved nothing. Then she lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, and punched her ticket during a singularly unsuccessful stint as Secretary of State. Never has she had an original thought, formulated a successful strategy, or stepped out of the shadow of her singular husband."http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/07/hillary-for-president.php

He wonders which actress under consideration for the two big jobs coming up looks most like her.

Back during Willie's first term there was a major piece on the editorial page of the WSJ by the lawyer who had been at the IRS in the late 1970s in charge of commodities futures fraud investigations in which he described the skullduggery by which Hillary made her $79,000 in commodities trading. A VERY powerful piece. GM, or anyone, is your google fu up to finding this?

Back during Willie's first term there was a major piece on the editorial page of the WSJ by the lawyer who had been at the IRS in the late 1970s in charge of commodities futures fraud investigations in which he described the skullduggery by which Hillary made her $79,000 in commodities trading. A VERY powerful piece. GM, or anyone, is your google fu up to finding this?

Hillary Rodham Clinton was allowed to order 10 cattle futures contracts, normally a $12,000 investment, in her first commodity trade in 1978 although she had only $1,000 in her account at the time, according to trade records the White House released yesterday.

The computerized records of her trades, which the White House obtained from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, show for the first time how she was able to turn her initial investment into $6,300 overnight. In about 10 months of trading, she made nearly $100,000, relying heavily on advice from her friend James B. Blair, an experienced futures trader.

The new records also raise the possibility that some of her profits -- as much as $40,000 – came from larger trades ordered by someone else and then shifted to her account, Leo Melamed, a former chairman of the Merc who reviewed the records for the White House, said in an interview. He said the discrepancies in Clinton's records also could have been caused by human error.

Even allocated trades would not necessarily have benefited Clinton, Melamed added. "I have no reason to change my original assessment. Mrs. Clinton violated no rules in the course of her transactions," he said.

Lisa Caputo, Clinton's spokeswoman, said the documents were released yesterday "to give as complete a picture as possible" of her trades. She said Clinton had never before seen them.

Blair, who urged Clinton to enter the high-risk futures market and ordered most of her trades, said in a recent interview that he "talked her into" her first futures trade in October 1978 before paperwork on her account was completed. It was liquidated quickly, he recalled, because "it was bigger than she wanted and required more money."

A close examination of her individual trades underscores Blair's pivotal role. It also shows that Robert L. "Red" Bone, who ran the Springdale, Ark., office of Ray E. Friedman and Co. (Refco), allowed Clinton to initiate and maintain many trading positions – besides the first – when she did not have enough money in her account to cover them.

Why would Bone do so? Bone could not be reached for comment, but Blair said he thought he knew why. "I was a very good customer," he said, noting he paid Bone $800,000 in commissions over the years. "They weren't going to hassle me. If I brought them somebody, they weren't going to hassle them."

Besides, he added, Bone would not worry if he agreed with his clients' bet on which way the price of a given contract would go.

Blair, who at the time was outside counsel to Tyson Foods Inc., Arkansas' largest employer, says he was advising Clinton out of friendship, not to seek political gain for his state-regulated client. At the time of many of the trades, Bill Clinton was governor.

Hillary Clinton has said she made all the trading decisions herself and has tried to play down Blair's role. But she acknowledged in April, three weeks after her trades were first disclosed, that Blair actually placed most of the trades.

Blair advised Clinton again on July 17, 1979. He recalled that she started that trading day by losing $26,460 on 10 cattle contracts she had held for more than a month, by far her worst loss as a futures player. On his recommendation, he said, she immediately went back into the market. She acquired 50 new cattle contracts – worth $1.4 million -- and when the price moved in her favor, unloaded them around noon for a quick gain of $10,550. This recouped part of her loss.

Blair said Clinton and other friends he suggested trades for had lost money that spring on feeder cattle. Those trades "caused everyone some grief," he said. "I'm sure I was pressing to get everyone back above water" in recommending the quick and bold day trade.

The White House defense of Hillary Clinton's preferential treatment was that other customers in the same office also were allowed to trade without having enough cash in their accounts.

While Clinton's account was wildly successful to an outsider, it was small compared to what others were making in the cattle futures market in the 1978-79 period. An investigation of the cattle futures market at that time by Rep. Neal Smith (D-Iowa) found that in one 16-month period 32 traders made more than $110 million in profits from large trades -- those of 50 contracts or more. Clinton traded positions of 50 or more contracts only three times.

The records the White House released yesterday were part of an investigative file from 1979, when the exchange charged Bone and Refco with violations of its record keeping and margin requirement rules. Bone was suspended for three years; Refco paid a $250,000 fine, then the largest in the exchange's history. Internal memos from that investigation cover transactions from the same period in June in which Clinton was trading, but not the same trades. In one instance, the Merc found Bone and a fellow broker were ordering 1,000 cattle contracts at a time – far over the limit allowed at the time – and then allocating them to other customers.

One internal Merc memo said "there is reason to believe" that a majority of Bone's accounts were traded without the clients' permission. Blair said that Bone at times traded his personal account without permission.

Blair said he doubted Bone traded Clinton's account without her permission.

Melamed said it was "impossible" to determine the exact cause for the discrepancies between the Merc computer record of Clinton's trades and the trading records she received from Refco, which the White House released earlier.

She said that for six trades, her initial trading position in the Refco records were not reflected in the Merc documents. On one other trade neither her purchase nor sale was included. On that trade she netted $12,150 on 15 cattle contracts she held for four days.

Clinton reported a loss of $2,480 on one of the trades in question, Melamed noted.

One was a "day trade" on hog contracts that netted $2,553. Melamed said "day trades" are the only way to assure profit even if favorable trading positions are allocated to a customer's account. Any position held overnight would be subject to the rise and fall in prices in the volatile futures market, he added.

Staff researcher Barbara J. Saffir contributed to this report.

In commodities futures trading, an account that falls below the "maintenance margin" typically triggers a "margin call," where the trader must put up sufficient cash to cover the contracts. Although Hillary Rodham Clinton's account was under-margined for nearly all of July 1979, no margin calls were made, no additional cash was put up, and she eventually reaped a $60,000 profit.

June 29 ......... $56,466 (Margin: Value account should have had to continue trading.)

Nice work on finding that info so quickly on Hillary's magical career in trading commodities! The WSJ article by the IRS lawyer is even better-- it shows how it was all a pay-off by Tyson Foods (the largest employer in Arkansas) to the wife of the then-candidate for governor. Any chance you can run it down?

Hypocrisy and HypergamyBehind the Huma-Hillary double standard. By JAMES TARANTO

Who the heck does Huma think she is? That's the question "a top [New York] state Democrat" is asking about Anthony Weiner's wife, according to a report by Fred Dicker of the New York Post. "The Clintons are pissed off that Weiner's campaign is saying that Huma is just like Hillary,'' Dicker's Dem declares. "How dare they compare Huma with Hillary? Hillary was the first lady. Hillary was a senator. She was secretary of state."

Being called low-class by the Clintons has got to hurt. But we don't see how Dicker's source's comparison works to Huma's disadvantage. Yes, Mrs. Clinton was a U.S. senator and secretary of state--but that was after Bill hid behind her skirts during both the 1992 campaign and the 1998-99 Monica Lewinsky scandal. Before 2001, she had never held a job in politics or government--in contrast with Huma, who was already a top State Department aide when, in 2011, Weiner was first exposed as having exposed himself.

And Hillary's defenses of her husband were far more outlandish than Huma's. "I'm not sitting here some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette," Arkansas's then-first lady told "60 Minutes" in 1992. Her denial was literally accurate, since to sit standing is a contradiction in terms. But even as she literally sat, she figuratively stood by Bill, making her denial reminiscent of Richard Nixon's "I'm not a crook."

One of them abased herself to help her husband's political career. The other was an aide to the secretary of state.

Her 1998 defense called to mind Nixon's attack dog, Spiro Agnew. In an interview with NBC's "Today," she waved away Bill's Oval Office hanky panky by denouncing his political detractors: "The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president."

We suppose it would be an even greater strain on credulity for Huma to posit a vast right-wing anti-Weiner conspiracy. In famously liberal New York, right-wingers would be lucky to assemble a half-vast conspiracy. Even so, it seems clear that Huma has conducted herself with considerably more grace and dignity than Hillary did. We say that not as a Huma admirer, merely as an observer sufficiently fair-minded to credit her with living up to a low standard.

Yet Dicker's anonymous source isn't alone. Prominent members of the media elite have joined in dumping on the Weiners while expressing their admiration for the Clintons. Here's the Washington Post's Sally Quinn (no relation, as far as we know, to Weiner rival Christine Quinn):

Though [Huma's] friends say she is strong and resolute and defiant, sadly she makes all women look like weak and helpless victims. She was not standing there in a position of strength. It was such a setback for women everywhere.

Did Hillary deal "women everywhere" a "setback" back in the 1990s? Quinn doesn't say in this post, but in another one last month she was considerably less judgmental:

Hillary Clinton is well known for her faith. She went to Sunday school and attended church all of her life, taught Sunday school, was a member of the altar guild and youth groups. When she came to Washington in 1993, she joined a Bible study group. She says she was sent daily scriptures from her group. She was dubbed Saint Hillary at one point for her religious leanings and even made a speech referencing Rabbi Michael Lerner's "The Politics of Meaning." When she became a senator, she joined the Senate Prayer Breakfast. She has always been supportive of federal funding for faith-based initiatives. When asked in an interview after the Monica Lewinsky scandal how she had gotten through it, Clinton referred to her "very serious" grounding in faith and talked about her "extended faith family" who helped her out, as well as "people whom I knew who were literally praying for me in prayer circles, who were prayer warriors for me."

By contrast, Quinn is dismissive of Huma's faith: "So why has Abedin done this? Some have suggested that her Muslim background and growing up in Saudi Arabia have skewed her views of how women should be treated. But she's been away from that for too long."

The trouble with Carlos [Danger, Weiner's nom de net] and his ilk is they're not just a danger to themselves, but a danger to everyone else. One look at the humiliated face of the elegant Huma Abedin, spear-carrier for Hillary Clinton's women's-empowerment message, will tell you that.

While it's possible Brown means to be sarcastic about "Hillary Clinton's women's-empowerment message," we doubt it. The cover story of Brown's inaugural issue of then-magazine Newsweek was a puff piece about "how she's shattering glass ceilings everywhere."

What accounts for the contrast between the disparagement of Huma and the reverence for Hillary? It won't do to say that Mrs. Clinton is more accomplished now than Mrs. Weiner, for Huma's now-critics treated Hillary no less kindly back then. No, the only possible explanation is the one the Washington Post's Eric Wemple puts forth:

The distinction may have more to do with political gifts than marital particulars. Despite his high media profile, Weiner is a former House member who was the the lead sponsor of only one bill that actually became law. Clinton was a successful two-term president of the United States, and he went on to be the head of a global philanthropic enterprise.

So Hillary is admired and Huma maligned because Hillary married better. Isn't feminism wonderful?

Queen Hillary?Political rent-seeking and her expected coronation.By JAMES TARANTO

The New York Times gave us an amusing juxtaposition earlier this week. Editorialist David Firestone sang the praises of Hillary Clinton's deceptive and pandering speech in which she denounced measures against voter fraud, and he called on Mrs. Clinton to mount another favorite Times hobbyhorse:

Campaign finance issues deserve a speech just as impassioned as the one on voting rights, and it will be interesting to see if Ms. Clinton devotes more time to the subject than President Obama has.

Building a campaign around these kinds of issues particularly non-partisan redistricting and easy registration--has always been seen as too narrow and too wonky for a major candidate. But Ms. Clinton's political future, not to mention the health of her party and her country, depend on someone taking them on and not letting go. And should Ms. Clinton succeed Mr. Obama, she will encounter precisely the same kind of blanket opposition in the House unless she starts trying to change it now.

Firestone is confusing his categories here: Redistricting and voter registration are not "campaign finance issues," and while the federal government has broad authority to regulate registration, redistricting is almost entirely a state prerogative. The Voting Rights Act does give the feds some involvement in redistricting, but it cuts in the opposite direction of "nonpartisan redistricting": Washington presses states to create "majority minority" districts. Given current voting patterns, that leads to a concentration of Democratic voters, making surrounding districts easier for Republicans to carry.

But what intrigues us is the way in which laws restricting political speech--in the areas of both campaign finance and taxation--are vital to, as Firestone puts it, "Ms. Clinton's political future."

We noted Tuesday that Mrs. Clinton is using her sinecure at the Clinton Foundation--a charity that is fully tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code--as a "formal apparatus" to prepare for a prospective campaign for president in 2016. Yesterday's Times features a lengthy investigative report on the foundation:

Soon after the 10th anniversary of the foundation bearing his name, Bill Clinton met with a small group of aides and two lawyers from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. Two weeks of interviews with Clinton Foundation executives and former employees had led the lawyers to some unsettling conclusions.

The review echoed criticism of Mr. Clinton's early years in the White House: For all of its successes, the Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in. . . .

Worried that the foundation's operating revenues depend too heavily on Mr. Clinton's nonstop fund-raising, the three Clintons are embarking on a drive to raise an endowment of as much as $250 million, with events already scheduled in the Hamptons and London. . . .

And efforts to insulate the foundation from potential conflicts have highlighted just how difficult it can be to disentangle the Clintons' charity work from Mr. Clinton's moneymaking ventures and Mrs. Clinton's political future, according to interviews with more than two dozen former and current foundation employees, donors and advisers to the family. Nearly all of them declined to speak for attribution, citing their unwillingness to alienate the Clinton family.

Difficult it no doubt is. It would be insurmountable if the Clintons (Bill in particular) lacked the star power that makes raising a $250 million endowment a feasible goal. That kind of money will enable the Clintons to buy the legal expertise to make sure everything they do complies with the letter of the law--no matter how shady it may seem to use a 501(c)(3) charity as a political vehicle.

Enlarge ImageimageimageAssociated Press

You've never heard of him, but he's Maryland's governor.

No wonder that, as Politico reports, other prospective Democratic presidential candidates are despairing: "The Democratic field has largely been frozen in place as party leaders give near-total deference to [Mrs.] Clinton, the former secretary of state who is a prohibitive favorite in early Democratic primary polling. . . . For any non-Clinton Democrat, exploring the 2016 election is something of an exercise in perceived futility."

To be sure, the Clinton Foundation's wealth isn't the only reason Mrs. Clinton looms far larger than any of her prospective opponents. The field is somewhat weak owing to the Democrats' disastrous performance in the 2010 election. (Republicans had the same problem in 2008 and 2012.) Unless you count Joe Biden, Mrs. Clinton is the only prospective candidate who has previously run for president.

And of course, she was thought inevitable in 2008. Then again, back then, according to the Times, her husband's foundation "found itself competing against Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign for donors amid a recession." For now, the foundation and the "campaign" are one and the same, and one expects that if Mrs. Clinton begins a formal campaign some two years hence, it and the foundation will operate much more harmoniously this time around.

On Tuesday we asked if the Internal Revenue Service would investigate the Clinton Foundation for evidently acting as a front group for a political campaign. The question was facetious; as we wrote, the Obama IRS only goes after little guys.

The biggest problem with the IRS scandal, of course, is that it involved viewpoint discrimination: Conservative groups were at far greater risk than liberal ones of intrusive scrutiny. That is why one cannot rule out the possibility that the 2012 election was stolen on Obama's behalf.

Democrats have tried to wave this problem away by pointing to a handful of unlucky lefties that got caught in the net. The scandal would be less severe if the IRS had in fact been evenhanded in its persecution of small political groups. But it would still have been a problem for American democracy, and the Clinton Foundation story shows why.

By their nature, complex and burdensome regulations on political speech--whether in campaign finance statutes or in the tax code--are easier to comply with when you have a lot of money and can afford to hire the best legal talent. Just as in the private marketplace, regulation gives incumbents a huge advantage over upstart challengers.

Technically, Mrs. Clinton is not an incumbent, but the Clintons' dynastic strategizing has given her the advantages of incumbency and then some. If she turns out to be the 45th president, she will owe her position in large part to rent-seeking. David Firestone is right to say that her political future depends on "campaign finance issues." He's dead wrong to suggest that puts her somehow on the side of good government.

Soon after the 10th anniversary of the foundation bearing his name, Bill Clinton met with a small group of aides and two lawyers from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. Two weeks of interviews with Clinton Foundation executives and former employees had led the lawyers to some unsettling conclusions.

The review echoed criticism of Mr. Clinton’s early years in the White House: For all of its successes, the Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.

And concern was rising inside and outside the organization about Douglas J. Band, a onetime personal assistant to Mr. Clinton who had started a lucrative corporate consulting firm — which Mr. Clinton joined as a paid adviser — while overseeing the Clinton Global Initiative, the foundation’s glitzy annual gathering of chief executives, heads of state, and celebrities.

The review set off more than a year of internal debate, and spurred an evolution in the organization that included Mr. Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, taking on a dominant new role as the family grappled with the question of whether the foundation — and its globe-spanning efforts to combat AIDS, obesity and poverty — would survive its founder.

Now those efforts are taking on new urgency. In the coming weeks, the foundation, long Mr. Clinton’s domain since its formation in 2001, will become the nerve center of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s increasingly busy public life.

This fall, Mrs. Clinton and her staff will move into offices at the foundation’s new headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, occupying two floors of the Time-Life Building. Amid speculation about her 2016 plans, Mrs. Clinton is adding major new initiatives on women, children and jobs to what has been renamed the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

Worried that the foundation’s operating revenues depend too heavily on Mr. Clinton’s nonstop fund-raising, the three Clintons are embarking on a drive to raise an endowment of as much as $250 million, with events already scheduled in the Hamptons and London. And after years of relying on Bruce R. Lindsey, the former White House counsel whose friendship with Mr. Clinton stretches back decades, to run the organization while living part-time in Arkansas, the family has hired a New York-based chief executive with a background in management consulting.

“We’re trying to institutionalize the foundation so that it will be here long after the lives of any of us,” Mr. Lindsey said. “That’s our challenge and that is what we are trying to address.”

But the changing of the guard has aggravated long-simmering tensions within the former first family’s inner circle as the foundation tries to juggle the political and philanthropic ambitions of a former president, a potential future president, and their increasingly visible daughter.

And efforts to insulate the foundation from potential conflicts have highlighted just how difficult it can be to disentangle the Clintons’ charity work from Mr. Clinton’s moneymaking ventures and Mrs. Clinton’s political future, according to interviews with more than two dozen former and current foundation employees, donors and advisers to the family. Nearly all of them declined to speak for attribution, citing their unwillingness to alienate the Clinton family.

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Last Thursday, Mr. Clinton arrived two hours late to an exuberant welcome at a health clinic about 60 miles north of Johannesburg. Children in zebra-striped loincloths sang as Mr. Clinton and Ms. Clinton made their entrance, and the former president enthusiastically explained how his foundation had helped the South African government negotiate large reductions in the price of drugs that halt the progress of HIV. Aaron Motsoaledi, South Africa’s minister of health, heaped praise on the effort. “Because of your help we are able to treat three and a half times more people than we used to,” he told the crowd.

The project is typical of the model pioneered by the Clinton Foundation, built around dozens of partnerships with private companies, governments, or other nonprofit groups. Instead of handing out grants, the foundation recruits donors and advises them on how best to deploy their money or resources, from helping Procter & Gamble donate advanced water-purification packets to developing countries to working with credit card companies to expand the volume of low-cost loans offered to poor inner city residents.

The foundation, which has 350 employees in 180 countries, remains largely powered by Mr. Clinton’s global celebrity and his ability to connect corporate executives, A-listers and government officials. On this month’s Africa trip, Mr. Clinton was accompanied by the actors Dakota Fanning and Jesse Eisenberg and the son of the New York City mayoral candidate John A. Catsimatidis, a longtime donor.

For most of the foundation’s existence, its leadership has been dominated by loyal veterans of the Clintons’ political lives. Ira C. Magaziner, who was a Rhodes scholar with Mr. Clinton and ran Mrs. Clinton’s failed attempt at a health care overhaul in the 1990s, is widely credited as the driving force behind the foundation’s largest project, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, which, among other efforts, negotiates bulk purchasing agreements and price discounts on lifesaving medicines.

Mr. Band, who arrived at the White House in 1995 and worked his way up to become Mr. Clinton’s closest personal aide, standing behind the president on golf courses and the global stage, helped build the foundation’s fund-raising structure. He conceived of and for many years helped run the Clinton Global Initiative, the annual conference that draws hundreds of business leaders and heads of state to New York City where attendees are pushed to make specific philanthropic commitments.

Today, big-name companies vie to buy sponsorships at prices of $250,000 and up, money that has helped subsidize the foundation’s annual operating costs. Last year, the foundation and two subsidiaries had revenues of more than $214 million.

Yet the foundation’s expansion has also been accompanied by financial problems. In 2007 and 2008, the foundation also found itself competing against Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign for donors amid a recession. Millions of dollars in contributions intended to seed an endowment were diverted to other programs, creating tension between Mr. Magaziner and Mr. Band. The foundation piled up a $40 million deficit during those two years, according to tax returns. Last year, it ran more than $8 million in the red.

Amid those shortfalls, the foundation has sometimes catered to donors and celebrities who gave money in ways that raised eyebrows in the low-key nonprofit world. In 2009, during a Clinton Global Initiative gathering at the University of Texas at Austin, the foundation purchased a first-class ticket for the actress Natalie Portman, a special guest, who brought her beloved Yorkie, according to two former foundation employees.

In interviews, foundation officials partly blamed the 2008 recession and difficulties in getting donors to provide operating support rather than restricted grants for specific programs for the deficits.

But others criticized Mr. Magaziner, who is widely seen within the foundation as impulsive and lacking organizational skills. On one occasion, Mr. Magaziner dispatched a team of employees to fly around the world for months gathering ideas for a climate change proposal that never got off the ground. Another time, he ignored a report — which was commissioned at significant expense from the consulting firm McKinsey & Company — on how the foundation could get involved in forestry initiatives.

Mr. Magaziner’s management style and difficulty keeping projects within budget were also raised in discussions that surrounded the 2011 Simpson Thacher review. (One person who attended a meeting with Mr. Magaziner recalled his lying on a conference room table in the middle of the meeting because of terrible back spasms, snapping at a staff member.)

Mr. Band repeatedly urged Mr. Clinton to fire Mr. Magaziner, according to people briefed on the matter. Mr. Clinton refused, confiding in aides that despite Mr. Magaziner’s managerial weaknesses, he was a visionary with good intentions. The former president, according to one person who knows them both, “thinks Ira is brilliant — and brilliant people get away with a lot in Clinton world.”

Indeed, by then, Mr. Magaziner had persuaded Mr. Clinton and the foundation to spin the health initiative off into a separate organization, with Mr. Magaziner as its chief executive and the Clinton Foundation appointing a majority of its board members. The financial problems continued. In 2010 and 2011, the first two years when the health initiative operated as a stand-alone organization, it ran annual shortfalls of more than $4 million. A new chief financial officer, hired in 2010, left eight months later.

A foundation official said the health initiative had only three chief financial officers in 10 years and that its financial problem was a common one in the nonprofit world: For all the grant money coming in — more than $160 million in 2011 — Mr. Magaziner had also had difficulty raising money for operating costs. But by the end of 2011, the health initiative had expanded its board, adding two seats. Chelsea Clinton took one.

Growing Ventures

As the foundation grew, so did the outside business ventures pursued by Mr. Clinton and several of his aides.

None have drawn more scrutiny in Clinton circles than Teneo, a firm co-founded in 2009 by Mr. Band, described by some as a kind of surrogate son to Mr. Clinton. Aspiring to merge corporate consulting, public relations and merchant banking in a single business, Mr. Band poached executives from Wall Street, recruited other Clinton aides to join as employees or advisers and set up shop in a Midtown office formerly belonging to one of the country’s top hedge funds.

By 2011, the firm had added a third partner, Declan Kelly, a former State Department envoy for Mrs. Clinton. And Mr. Clinton had signed up as a paid adviser to the firm.

Teneo worked on retainer, charging monthly fees as high as $250,000, according to current and former clients. The firm recruited clients who were also Clinton Foundation donors, while Mr. Band and Mr. Kelly encouraged others to become new foundation donors. Its marketing materials highlighted Mr. Band’s relationship with Mr. Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative, where Mr. Band sat on the board of directors through 2011 and remains an adviser. Some Clinton aides and foundation employees began to wonder where the foundation ended and Teneo began.

Those worries intensified after the collapse of MF Global, the international brokerage firm led by Jon S. Corzine, a former governor of New Jersey, in the fall of 2011. The firm had been among Teneo’s earliest clients, and its collapse over bad European investments — while paying $125,000 a month for the firm’s public relations and financial advice — drew Teneo and the Clintons unwanted publicity.

Mr. Clinton ended his advisory role with Teneo in March 2012, after an article appeared in The New York Post suggesting that Mrs. Clinton was angry over the MF Global controversy. A spokesman for Mr. Clinton denied the report. But in a statement released afterward, Mr. Clinton announced that he would no longer be paid by Teneo.

He also praised Mr. Band effusively, crediting him with keeping the foundation afloat and expressing hopes that Mr. Band would continue to advise the Global Initiative.

“I couldn’t have accomplished half of what I have in my post-presidency without Doug Band,” Mr. Clinton said in the statement.

Even that news release was a source of controversy within the foundation, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. Mr. Band helped edit the statement, which other people around the Clintons felt gave him too much credit for the foundation’s accomplishments. (The quotation now appears as part of Mr. Band’s biography on the Teneo Web site.)

Mr. Band left his paid position with the foundation in late 2010, but has remained involved with C.G.I., as have a number of Teneo clients, like Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical and UBS Americas. Standard Chartered, a British financial services company that paid a $340 million fine to New York regulators last year to settle charges that it had laundered money from Iran, is a Teneo client and a sponsor of the 2012 global initiative.

Last year, Coca-Cola’s chief executive, Muhtar Kent, won a coveted spot on the dais with Mr. Clinton, discussing the company’s partnership with another nonprofit to use its distributors to deliver medical goods to patients in Africa. (A Coca-Cola spokesman said that the company’s sponsorship of foundation initiatives long predated Teneo and that the firm plays no role in Coca-Cola’s foundation work.)

In March 2012, David Crane, the chief executive of NRG, an energy company, led a widely publicized trip with Mr. Clinton to Haiti, where they toured green energy and solar power projects that NRG finances through a $1 million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative.

Officials said the foundation has established clear guidelines for the Clinton Global Initiative to help prevent any favoritism or special treatment of particular donors or sponsors.

Teneo was not the only worry: other events thrust the foundation into internal turmoil. In 2011, a wave of midlevel program staff members departed, reflecting the frustration of much of the foundation’s policy personnel with the old political hands running the organization. Around the time of the Simpson Thacher review, Mr. Lindsey suffered a stroke, underscoring concerns about the foundation’s line of succession. John D. Podesta, a chief of staff in Mr. Clinton’s White House, stepped in for several months as temporary chief executive.

While much attention has focused on Mrs. Clinton’s emerging role within the foundation, advisers to the family say her daughter’s growing involvement could prove more critical in the years ahead. After years of pursuing other career paths, including working at McKinsey & Company and a hedge fund, Ms. Clinton, 33, has begun to assert herself as a force within the foundation. Her perspective is shaped far more than her parents’ by her time in the world of business, and she is poised to play a significant role in shaping the foundation’s future, particularly if Mrs. Clinton chooses to run for president.

She formally joined the foundation’s board in 2011, marking her growing role there — and the start of intensifying tensions between her and Mr. Band. Several people close to the Clintons said that she became increasingly concerned with the negative impact Mr. Band’s outside business might have on her father’s work and that she cited concerns raised during the internal review about potential conflicts of interest involving Teneo.

It was Ms. Clinton who suggested that the newly installed chief executive, Eric Braverman, be considered for the job during a nearly two-year search. A friend and a former colleague from McKinsey, Mr. Braverman, 38, had helped the Clintons with philanthropic projects in Haiti after the earthquake there. And his hiring coincided with Ms. Clinton’s appointment as the vice chairwoman of the foundation board, where she will bear significant responsibility for steering her family’s philanthropy, both in the causes it tackles and in the potential political and financial conflicts it must avoid.

Ms. Clinton has also grown worried that the foundation she stood to inherit would collapse without her father, who turns 67 next week. Mr. Clinton, who had quadruple-bypass surgery in 2004 and no longer eats meat or dairy products, talks frequently about his own mortality.

Mr. Catsimatidis said Ms. Clinton “has to learn how to deal with the whole world because she wants to follow in the footsteps of her father and her mother.”

Shifting the Emphasis

Over the years, the foundation has dived into virtually any cause that sparked Mr. Clinton’s interest: childhood obesity in the United States, sustainable farming in South America, mentoring entrepreneurs, saving elephants from poaching, and more. That list will shift soon as Mrs. Clinton and Chelsea build their staffs to focus on issues including economically empowering women and combating infant mortality.

In the coming months, as Mrs. Clinton mulls a 2016 presidential bid, the foundation could also serve as a base for her to home in on issues and to build up a stable of trusted staff members who could form the core of a political campaign.

Mrs. Clinton’s staff at the foundation’s headquarters includes Maura Pally, a veteran aide who advised her 2008 presidential campaign and worked at the State Department, and Madhuri Kommareddi, a former policy aide to President Obama.

Dennis Cheng, Mrs. Clinton’s deputy chief of protocol at the State Department and a finance director of her presidential campaign, will oversee the endowment drive, which some of the Clintons’ donors already describe as a dry run for 2016.

And Mrs. Clinton’s personal staff of roughly seven people — including Huma Abedin, wife of the New York mayoral candidate Anthony D. Weiner — will soon relocate from a cramped Washington office to the foundation’s headquarters. They will work on organizing Mrs. Clinton’s packed schedule of paid speeches to trade groups and awards ceremonies and assist in the research and writing of Mrs. Clinton’s memoir about her time at the State Department, to be published by Simon & Schuster next summer.

Well, sure: she’s a Democrat. That’s the easy, cynical response, and let’s face it–it’s probably right. Still, by any normal standard Benghazi would be considered a career-ending debacle. Four men, including one of her own ambassadors, were murdered on Hillary’s watch, after they had pleaded with her State Department for better security. The cable denying the ambassador’s request for better protection went out over Hillary’s signature. THAT’S JUST A FORMALITY! The Democrats say. SHE KNEW NOTHING ABOUT IT! Oh, I see. She was just a figurehead. Small matters like mortal threats to American ambassadors are too minor to come to her attention. Right. Such attention to detail certainly qualifies her to be president!

Then there is the nagging question of what Hillary was doing during the seven hours or so when her ambassador, and those who tried to protect him, were being murdered by Islamic terrorists. Nothing, apparently. Which is just fine with the Democrats. Evidently they are content to have their political “leaders” play purely symbolic roles.

The aftermath is embarrassing, too. Hillary told the father of one of the murdered SEALs that the administration would stop at nothing to bring that lousy video maker to justice. The man must have thought she was a lunatic. Later, according to an eyewitness, Hillary erupted in rage against a Republican Congressman who suggested that Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Which, of course, she knew it was shortly after it began. Is it bad to be a cowardly liar? Not if you are a Democratic presidential candidate, evidently.

The aftermath didn’t end with the administration’s initial lies, either. It continues to this day. One might think that a Secretary of State who lost an ambassador on her watch would stop at nothing to make sure that the terrorists who carried out the attack were killed or otherwise punished. (Killed, preferably.) If this is a subject in which Hillary has taken interest, she has shown no sign of it. Her hunt for the terrorists who murdered Ambassador Stevens is on a par with O.J. Simpson’s search for the “real killers.”

Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State was a disaster by any rational evaluation. It started with the mis-translated “reset” button and went downhill from there. The current fiasco that stretches from Iraq to Tunisia is, at least in part, the result of the stunningly incompetent Obama/Clinton foreign policy from 2009 to 2013. It is probably true that most Americans don’t pay enough attention to understand how poorly served we have been in foreign affairs by Obama and Clinton. But Benghazi: that is something that just about anyone can grasp. When the State Department needed a leader–the one time in Hillary Clinton’s life when she wasn’t holding on to her husband’s coattails, when she was actually supposed to be in charge of something–there was no leader to be found.

"Where is the G*damn f**king flag! I want the G*damn f**king flag up every morning at f**king sunrise." -From the book "Inside the White House" by Ronald Kessler, p.244- Hillary to her staff at the Arkansas Governor's mansion on Labor Day 1991.

"F**k off! It's enough I have to see you shit-kickers every day, I'm not going to talk to you too!! Just do your G*damn job and keep your mouth shut." -From the book "America Evita" by Christopher Anderson, p.90-Hillary to her State Trooper body guards after one greeted her with "Good Morning"

"If you want to remain on this detail, get your f**king ass over here and grab those bags!” -From the book "The First Partner" p.259- Hillary to a Secret Service Agent reluctant to carry her luggage to keep his hands free in case of an incident.

"Stay the f**k back, stay the f**k back away from me! Don't come within ten yards of me, or else! Just f**king do as I say, Okay!!?" -From the book "Unlimited Access" by Clinton FBI Agent in Charge, Gary Aldrige, p.139- Hillary screaming at her Secret Service detail.

"Where's the miserable c**k sucker!" -From the book "The Truth About Hillary" by Edward Klein, p.5- Hillary shouting at a Secret Service officer.

"You f**king idiot" -From the book "Crossfire" p.84-Hillary to a State Trooper who was driving her to an event.

"Put this on the f**king ground! I left my sunglasses in the limo. I need those sunglasses. We need to go back!"-From the book "Dereliction of Duty" p.71-72-- Hillary to Marine One helicopter pilot to turn back while en route to Air Force One.

"Come on Bill, put your d**k away! You can't f**k her here!!" -From the book "Inside the White House" by Ronald Kessler, p.243-Hillary to Gov. Clinton when she spots him talking with an attractive female.

This ill-tempered, violent, loud mouth, hateful and abusive Bitch wants to be your next president and have total control as Commander In Chief of our Military , the very Military for which she has shown incredible disdain and disrespect throughout her public life.

Surely the people of the United States of America can do better than this "toilet-mouth" woman.

In the year of the mud soaked drug sex orgy Woodstock this is what the Hill had to say. Not one kind word of America.Whoever the Repubs pick should have some smart people pick this apart and formulate a PRO America plan going forward that America has been in theory the land of freedom, opportunity, pride, confidence, prosperity for all instead of demoralizing themes of limits, unfairness, hollow men of anger and bitterness, and self bountiful ladies of righteous degradation (aka stand by your man). The Clintons are the face of the anti Vietnam war kids of the 60's who ARE now in power. The only difference is they don't even believe in a newer America. They no longer ever believe in America. They believe in world wide government.

In addition to inviting Senator Brooke to speak to them this morning, the Class of '69 has expressed a desire to speak to them and for them at this morning's commencement. There was no debate so far as I could ascertain as to who their spokesman was to be -- Miss Hillary Rodham. Member of this graduating class, she is a major in political science and a candidate for the degree with honors. In four years she has combined academic ability with active service to the College, her junior year having served as a Vil Junior, and then as a member of Senate and during the past year as President of College Government and presiding officer of College Senate. She is also cheerful, good humored, good company, and a good friend to all of us and it is a great pleasure to present to this audience Miss Hillary Rodham.

Remarks of Hillary D. Rodham, President of the Wellesley College Government Association and member of the Class of 1969, on the occasion of Wellesley's 91st Commencement, May 31, 1969:

I am very glad that Miss Adams made it clear that what I am speaking for today is all of us -- the 400 of us -- and I find myself in a familiar position, that of reacting, something that our generation has been doing for quite a while now. We're not in the positions yet of leadership and power, but we do have that indispensable task of criticizing and constructive protest and I find myself reacting just briefly to some of the things that Senator Brooke said. This has to be brief because I do have a little speech to give. Part of the problem with empathy with professed goals is that empathy doesn't do us anything. We've had lots of empathy; we've had lots of sympathy, but we feel that for too long our leaders have used politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible. What does it mean to hear that 13.3% of the people in this country are below the poverty line? That's a percentage. We're not interested in social reconstruction; it's human reconstruction. How can we talk about percentages and trends? The complexities are not lost in our analyses, but perhaps they're just put into what we consider a more human and eventually a more progressive perspective. The question about possible and impossible was one that we brought with us to Wellesley four years ago. We arrived not yet knowing what was not possible. Consequently, we expected a lot. Our attitudes are easily understood having grown up, having come to consciousness in the first five years of this decade -- years dominated by men with dreams, men in the civil rights movement, the Peace Corps, the space program -- so we arrived at Wellesley and we found, as all of us have found, that there was a gap between expectation and realities. But it wasn't a discouraging gap and it didn't turn us into cynical, bitter old women at the age of 18. It just inspired us to do something about that gap. What we did is often difficult for some people to understand. They ask us quite often: "Why, if you're dissatisfied, do you stay in a place?" Well, if you didn't care a lot about it you wouldn't stay. It's almost as though my mother used to say, "I'll always love you but there are times when I certainly won't like you." Our love for this place, this particular place, Wellesley College, coupled with our freedom from the burden of an inauthentic reality allowed us to question basic assumptions underlying our education. Before the days of the media orchestrated demonstrations, we had our own gathering over in Founder's parking lot. We protested against the rigid academic distribution requirement. We worked for a pass-fail system. We worked for a say in some of the process of academic decision making. And luckily we were in a place where, when we questioned the meaning of a liberal arts education there were people with enough imagination to respond to that questioning. So we have made progress. We have achieved some of the things that initially saw as lacking in that gap between expectation and reality. Our concerns were not, of course, solely academic as all of us know. We worried about inside Wellesley questions of admissions, the kind of people that should be coming to Wellesley, the process for getting them here. We questioned about what responsibility we should have both for our lives as individuals and for our lives as members of a collective group.

Coupled with our concerns for the Wellesley inside here in the community were our concerns for what happened beyond Hathaway House. We wanted to know what relationship Wellesley was going to have to the outer world. We were lucky in that one of the first things Miss Adams did was to set up a cross-registration with MIT because everyone knows that education just can't have any parochial bounds any more. One of the other things that we did was the Upward Bound program. There are so many other things that we could talk about; so many attempts, at least the way we saw it, to pull ourselves into the world outside. And I think we've succeeded. There will be an Upward Bound program, just for one example, on the campus this summer.

Many of the issues that I've mentioned -- those of sharing power and responsibility, those of assuming power and responsibility have been general concerns on campuses throughout the world. But underlying those concerns there is a theme, a theme which is so trite and so old because the words are so familiar. It talks about integrity and trust and respect. Words have a funny way of trapping our minds on the way to our tongues but there are necessary means even in this multi-media age for attempting to come to grasps with some of the inarticulate maybe even inarticulable things that we're feeling. We are, all of us, exploring a world that none of us even understands and attempting to create within that uncertainty. But there are some things we feel, feelings that our prevailing, acquisitive, and competitive corporate life, including tragically the universities, is not the way of life for us. We're searching for more immediate, ecstatic and penetrating mode of living. And so our questions, our questions about our institutions, about our colleges, about our churches, about our government continue. The questions about those institutions are familiar to all of us. We have seen heralded across the newspapers. Senator Brooke has suggested some of them this morning. But along with using these words -- integrity, trust, and respect -- in regard to institutions and leaders we're perhaps harshest with them in regard to ourselves.

Every protest, every dissent, whether it's an individual academic paper, Founder's parking lot demonstration, is unabashedly an attempt to forge an identity in this particular age. That attempt at forging for many of us over the past four years has meant coming to terms with our humanness. Within the context of a society that we perceive -- now we can talk about reality, and I would like to talk about reality sometime, authentic reality, inauthentic reality, and what we have to accept of what we see -- but our perception of it is that it hovers often between the possibility of disaster and the potentiality for imaginatively responding to men's needs. There's a very strange conservative strain that goes through a lot of New Left, collegiate protests that I find very intriguing because it harkens back to a lot of the old virtues, to the fulfillment of original ideas. And it's also a very unique American experience. It's such a great adventure. If the experiment in human living doesn't work in this country, in this age, it's not going to work anywhere.

But we also know that to be educated, the goal of it must be human liberation. A liberation enabling each of us to fulfill our capacity so as to be free to create within and around ourselves. To be educated to freedom must be evidenced in action, and here again is where we ask ourselves, as we have asked our parents and our teachers, questions about integrity, trust, and respect. Those three words mean different things to all of us. Some of the things they can mean, for instance: Integrity, the courage to be whole, to try to mold an entire person in this particular context, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. If the only tool we have ultimately to use is our lives, so we use it in the way we can by choosing a way to live that will demonstrate the way we feel and the way we know. Integrity -- a man like Paul Santmire. Trust. This is one word that when I asked the class at our rehearsal what it was they wanted me to say for them, everyone came up to me and said "Talk about trust, talk about the lack of trust both for us and the way we feel about others. Talk about the trust bust." What can you say about it? What can you say about a feeling that permeates a generation and that perhaps is not even understood by those who are distrusted? All they can do is keep trying again and again and again. There's that wonderful line in East Coker by Eliot about there's only the trying, again and again and again; to win again what we've lost before.

And then respect. There's that mutuality of respect between people where you don't see people as percentage points. Where you don't manipulate people. Where you're not interested in social engineering for people. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences. And the word "consequences" of course catapults us into the future. One of the most tragic things that happened yesterday, a beautiful day, was that I was talking to woman who said that she wouldn't want to be me for anything in the world. She wouldn't want to live today and look ahead to what it is she sees because she's afraid. Fear is always with us but we just don't have time for it. Not now.

There are two people that I would like to thank before concluding. That's Ellie Acheson, who is the spearhead for this, and also Nancy Scheibner who wrote this poem which is the last thing that I would like to read:

My entrance into the world of so-called "social problems"Must be with quiet laughter, or not at all.The hollow men of anger and bitternessThe bountiful ladies of righteous degradationAll must be left to a bygone age.And the purpose of history is to provide a receptacleFor all those myths and oddmentsWhich oddly we have acquiredAnd from which we would become unburdenedTo create a newer worldTo transform the future into the present.We have no need of false revolutionsIn a world where categories tend to tyrannize our mindsAnd hang our wills up on narrow pegs.It is well at every given moment to seek the limits in our lives.And once those limits are understoodTo understand that limitations no longer exist.Earth could be fair. And you and I must be freeNot to save the world in a glorious crusadeNot to kill ourselves with a nameless gnawing painBut to practice with all the skill of our beingThe art of making possible.

Clinton takes the stage Tuesday night at the National Constitution Center (AP)

Hillary Clinton used her award ceremony at the National Constitution Center on Tuesday night to renew her call for action against the Syrian regime over its alleged use of chemical weapons against its own citizens.

Clinton was on hand to receive the National Constitution Center’s 25th annual Liberty Medal for her work on the international stage and on behalf of women and children.

There has been more attention paid to Tuesday night’s ceremony because former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush awarded Clinton the medal. Clinton and Bush are both believed to be seriously considering presidential campaigns in 2016.

“We do have some political disagreements,” Bush joked in his introductory remarks. “But there’s one thing we do agree on: the American people — especially those of Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina.”

Bush currently serves as director of the Constitution Center’s Board of Trustees.

“The president will address the nation shortly about the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against men, women and children,” Clinton told the audience in Philadelphia before President Barack Obama's address to the nation on Tuesday night. “It demands a strong response from the international community led by the United States.”

Clinton and Obama reportedly met at the White House on Monday to discuss the administration’s approach to the issue.

And while Clinton said the current debate over whether the U.S. should get involved in the Syrian civil war is “good for our democracy,” she also issued strong words against opponents of Obama.

“How do we respond when international rules of the road are violated?” Clinton asked the crowd. “When we let partisanship override citizenship … our standing in the world suffers.”

On Monday, Clinton said that an international effort led by Russia to have Syria hand over its chemical weapons had potential but also suggested concern that any such move could simply be a delay tactic from Syrian President Bashar Assad.

“If the regime immediately surrendered its stockpiles to international control,” as proposed by Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia, that would be an important step,” Clinton said. “But this cannot be another excuse for delay or obstruction — and Russia has to support the international community’s efforts sincerely or be held to account.”

In addition to Bush’s remarks, Clinton received praise from a set of bipartisan individuals including Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Republican strategist Mark McKinnon.-------

The coronation is well underway. Big money and celebrities and the mainstream media machine which makes tons off the Clinton's soap operas are hitching their money and investments to this wagon.

The "woman's" angle will be huge. I doubt the cans will have enough savvy to counter. And "can" women can compete for the older female vote but the younger women want the taxpayer and employer paid financial support, the pregnancy leave, etc.

Interesting piece that questions the positioning strategy of Hillary if she decides to run. Recall the Bill Clinton ran as centrist Democrat and brags now of the accomplishments that arose out his governing partnership with a Republican congress. But when Hillary leaned just ever so slightly to the middle in 2007-2008 she got run over by the left wing of her party.

Half the country despises her. She will simply not go away. She will as did Bill shove herself in front of us every single day. I already want to leave the country. The heckler should have yelled back that "you refuse to take responsibility when you were politely asked. So yes, now I am yelling."

Hillary and Bill Clinton are gearing up for a 2016 presidential run, and Tuesday's election for Virginia Governor is a preview of coming attractions. Terry McAuliffe, Bill and Hill's longtime friend and financial impresario, is leading Republican Ken Cuccinelli despite a federal probe of one of his businesses. For aficionados of the 1990s, the story includes the familiar cast of Clinton characters leveraging connections for political favors.

The focus is GreenTech Automotive, which was supposed to produce electric vehicles. Mr. McAuliffe launched GreenTech in 2009, looking to burnish his business credentials in anticipation of a second Virginia run (he lost a primary in 2009). In its hunt for cash, GreenTech turned to the federal government's EB-5 program, which provides visas to foreigners who invest at least $500,000 to create U.S. jobs.

File-In this July 6, 2012, file photograph, then GreenTech Automotive executive Terry McAuliffe, second from left, jokes with former President Bill Clinton, center and former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour following the unveiling of their new electric MyCar at their manufacturing facility in Horn Lake, Miss. Associated Press

EB-5 was created in 1990, and a federal immigration agency approves "regional centers"—often private companies—to administer the program. This outsourcing has raised national-security alarms, while federal authorities have a growing list of investigations into, or enforcement actions against, U.S. entities that have used the program to defraud foreigners.

GreenTech's use of EB-5 first raised red flags in 2009 as part of its application for Virginia state incentives to build a manufacturing plant. The state development agency refused, with one agency official writing in an email to colleagues that she couldn't view GreenTech's EB-5 program as anything other than "a visa-for-sale scheme with potential national security implications."

Mr. McAuliffe turned to Mississippi, where he landed $5 million in state incentives to build a factory on the promise of creating 350 jobs by 2014 and producing thousands of cars. Mr. McAuliffe's business partner, GreenTech co-founder Charles Wang, got another of his companies, Gulf Coast Funds Management, certified as a regional center for EB-5 visas for Mississippi and Louisiana.

Mr. Wang installed as CEO of Gulf Coast none other than Hillary Clinton's younger brother, Anthony Rodham. Gulf Coast's board includes several Democratic Party notables, such as former Clinton IRS Commissioner Margaret Richardson and former Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco. While Gulf Coast exists to direct EB-5 investments to startups across its entire "region," to date its website lists one project: GreenTech.

Mr. McAuliffe and Co. then began leveraging political connections to accelerate the visa process. The Washington Post WPO -0.85% has reported that government documents show that Mr. McAuliffe, Mr. Rodham and others at GreenTech and Gulf Coast had a dozen email and telephone conversations with senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security, including director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Alejandro Mayorkas.

You may remember Mr. Mayorkas. In the final days of the Clinton Administration, while working as a U.S. prosecutor in California, he called the Clinton White House to seek an early prison release for convicted cocaine trafficker Carlos Vignali. Mr. Mayorkas called at the request of Vignali's father, a prominent Democratic donor, who had also paid Hugh Rodham (Mrs. Clinton's other brother) $200,000 to lobby for the commutation. Mr. Clinton granted clemency on his last day in office.

Mr. McAuliffe met personally with Mr. Mayorkas, reached out directly to (now former) Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and contacted Mrs. Napolitano's chief of staff Noah Kroloff, according to testimony and publicly released documents and emails. He was clearly heard. DHS Assistant Secretary Doug Smith sent a February 2013 email to Mr. Kroloff: "Any way you can kick [Mr. Mayorkas] into gear? If this doesn't get resolved by [close of business] today, the [GreenTech] plant will have to shut down and lay off 100 people on Monday."

It isn't clear what DHS did on GreenTech's behalf, but a GreenTech prospectus in March said the company had received about $46 million from EB-5 investors. The Associated Press reported in July that the DHS inspector general has launched a preliminary investigation into whether Mr. Mayorkas improperly helped GreenTech. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley says he has documents showing Mr. Mayorkas bypassed normal security checks to accelerate visa approvals. Several DHS officials have requested whistleblower status to report that DHS officials gave preferential visa treatment to companies like Mr. McAuliffe's.

The Washington Post reported in August that one Chinese national who applied for a visa through Gulf Coast is an executive at Huawei Technologies, the telecom company that the HouseIntelligence Committee says poses a threat to U.S. security. The Post also reported that the SEC has subpoenaed GreenTech and Gulf Coast documents as part of a separate investigation into solicitation of foreign investors. Meanwhile, GreenTech's Mississippi site sits largely vacant, with a mere 80 employees and nary a car produced.

DHS, GreenTech and Gulf Coast officials have all publicly denied any wrongdoing. President Obama has nominated Mr. Mayorkas for the number two post at DHS, and at his July confirmation hearing he said he did not give special treatment to GreenTech. Mr. McAuliffe, who resigned from GreenTech last December (though he remains the largest investor), wrote in the Washington Post in August that investigators had not contacted him.

All of which will sound familiar to anyone old enough to recall the ethical follies of 1990s: the insider political deals, the dubious pardons, the stonewalling, and the denials that proved to be false after the election. If Mr. McAuliffe wins on Tuesday, the Clinton Show will officially be back in town.

Clinton Turns On ObamaBy DICK MORRISPublished on Dick Morris.com on November 13, 2013

Commentators have missed the significance of President Clinton's public expression of his "personal opinion" that Obama should "honor his commitment" to let people keep their health insurance plans if they like them.

By intervening in the chaos surrounding the ObamaCare launch, President Clinton has staked out ground for his wife in her efforts to position herself for the 2016 contest.

While the former president's comments were laced with reassurances that he approved of ObamaCare and that he felt it was the right direction for the nation to take, his outspoken demand that Obama reverse the cancellations is a bold step into the waters in advance of a 2016 Hillary candidacy.

That he was speaking for Hillary goes without saying. By having her husband articulate her views without saying so, she preserves deniability while putting distance between herself and ObamaCare, an important step for the former sponsor of the similar HillaryCare package of 1993.

The cancellations in health care policies looms as the single biggest threat to the Obama presidency, undermining his signature credential even as a paltry 50,000 American go to federal -- and 40,000 to state -- exchanges to sign up. By wading into this controversy, the former president and his wife stake out important ground and bring pressure on the president.

Hillary, in effect, separates herself from the ObamaCare catastrophe while still earning points on the left for supporting the program.

Using Bill to criticize Obama is a bit like having a vice presidential candidate to do so. But having a husband who could be free-lancing (but isn't) preserves her ability to distance herself from the accusations and suggestions.

The presidential election is three years out and Hillary Clinton hasn't even said she is running, but her political future has already touched off a re-examination of a central part of her past: the 1990s.

Republican researchers are mining archives from the Bill Clinton era in search of material that could be used to hobble her candidacy. In particular, they are laying the groundwork to capitalize on Mrs. Clinton's efforts as chairman of a task force to overhaul the health-care system in 1993-94, casting what they call "HillaryCare" as a forerunner of the Affordable Care Act that, at this point, is generally unpopular.

"She could be the mother of Obamacare," said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster.

Mrs. Clinton, in speeches she has been giving since leaving the State Department, has signaled she would use the 1990s as a selling point if she jumps in the race, making the case that, as first lady, she was part of an era that found solutions to the same sorts of political difficulties that bedevil present-day Washington.

Should Mrs. Clinton run, GOP campaign strategists also are zeroing in on the financial dealings of her husband's foundation and on the terrorist attack at a diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans last year, while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state. But a thorough re-litigation of the 1990s could be on the horizon.

Both sides are using the same episodes from the decade to argue to their advantage. Take the government shutdown in 1995-'96, which has special resonance in light of the 16-day shutdown that played out last month.

In recent speeches, Mrs. Clinton has mentioned the earlier shutdown to illustrate how the Clinton White House dealt with the type of gridlock that now engulfs Washington.

Speaking at Colgate University last month, she said that during the 1990s shutdown, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich "would spend all day saying terrible things about Bill on every TV station he could get on—occasionally about me as well—and then he would come to the White House at 9 o'clock at night" to strike a deal.

Implicit in the argument: She wouldn't let partisan differences harden to the point where the two sides stop talking.

Republican strategists, who expect Mrs. Clinton to run and believe she would be a heavy favorite to win the Democratic nomination, said they would portray the 1990s shutdown as a turbulent part of the Bill Clinton era, seeking to remind voters that Mrs. Clinton was in the White House during a time of political dysfunction that echoes the present day.

"People remember all this crazy stuff that was happening in the 1990s, like the government shutdown, and they say, 'Who needs that again?' " said a Republican strategist who is preparing for a possible Clinton bid.

Researchers at the Republican National Committee and conservative groups are sifting through old Clinton administration records to see if there is anything that takes on new relevance in view of her service in the Obama administration. They have fresh records to mine. The watchdog group Judicial Watch, through litigation, recently won the release of about 57,000 pages of health-care records from the Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, Ark.

In Mrs. Clinton's circle, associates fully expect Republicans to aggressively attack her on all fronts. One person close to her said: "I'm losing track—so far it's been the Golden Girls, Benghazi, the 1990s."

If she does run, Mrs. Clinton could rebut attacks by asserting that as secretary of state she had little responsibility for domestic policy and even less to do with the health-law rollout that has caused such difficulties for the president. The plan she proposed in the early 1990s would have capped premiums in order to hold down costs and would have created a system under which insurers would be required to bid for regional business.

In her 2008 presidential bid, her unsuccessful 1990s health revamp didn't loom large as an issue because she was rolling out a new proposal that, like the Affordable Care Act, included a mandate under which individuals would have to buy insurance.

In her Colgate speech, she trumpeted the budget surpluses that marked her husband's last years in office. "We were on a path to literally paying off our debt—not just our deficit—at the end of my husband's second term," she said. She went on to say that after Mr. Clinton left office the surpluses disappeared as a result of "two wars and a very large tax cut," among other reasons.

Republicans argue the economic gains under Bill Clinton didn't prove durable and that the middle class is struggling five years into the Obama presidency.

Dick Morris called Clinton's comment a "brilliant political" move. I am not so sure. Someone else pointed out that such a public criticism is walking a tight rope for the Clintons.Hopefully Bill will do for Hillary in '16 what his big fat mouth did for her in '08. Remember this? The MSM seems to ignore history but it precisely this that cost Hillary the primary against the ONE:

Of course Sam who I assume is a die hard Jewish Democrat was posting his disgust of the bashing of Sarah Palin by the Democrat machine. (as a Jew I am more revolted that non Jews who my fellow people who have been so successful in this country still as Savage points out wrap themselves in the flag of discrimination)

This is what '16 is going to be all about: women vs. men. And of course the single women vote is going to be their new core base. In the health field there are many young single mothers. And most are getting some assistance in some way. Indeed some choose not to marry because they have realized they can more from the taxpayer that way.

I don't know how the Republicans can compete. It is interesting that recent polls show even men who voted for Obama are beginning to realize the errors of Obama and his progressivism. Not true of women. Particularly the young single mother kind.

And this fact will drive the Crats to even more push the gender divide! The gender divisiveness will make racial divisiveness seem like small potatoes I have a feeling:

The History of Hillary-Bashing

By Sam Kleiner 5 hours ago The Daily Beast

The History of Hillary-Bashing

While Hillary Clinton has made clear that she won’t decide whether she wants to pursue the presidency in 2016 until next year, Republicans have decided they already are going to make her a top target. Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee Chairman, has promised this month to go after the “rough stuff” about Clinton in an ad campaign that will be “very aggressive.” The Republicans are promising a shotgun approach; just shoot out things like the “a botched health care roll out in the '90s and Benghazi,” and hope something hits.

This isn’t the first time that Republicans have tried to nasty attacks against Hillary. That tradition stretches back to 1992, when Republicans decided to go after her with a series of sexist attacks that continued into her husband’s administration. As Republicans start to open up attacks against Hillary once again, it’s worth remembering the sexist overtones in the earliest Republican attacks on Hillary, and how these attacks can backfire on Republicans.

“Hillary-bashing” became a central theme in the Republican campaign in 1992. “No one can convince me that the American people are so blind that they would replace Barbara Bush with Hillary Clinton," Pat Roberston told the Republican convention. This was no ordinary First Lady, she was, as Patrick Buchanan said, a “lawyer-spouse” who “has compared marriage as an institution to slavery.” While Hillary had been the stable breadwinner in years when Bill tried to get his political career to take off, Republicans were deeply uncomfortable with the idea of a marriage in which a woman could hold a successful career, especially one that may be on par with that of her husband. Even Barbara Bush, who first resisted the idea of going after Hillary, eventually came around to seeing her as “quite different” and a fair target.

In that election cycle, Republicans were attracted to portraying Hillary’s career as the manifestation of something maniacal about her intentions. In 1992, the right-wing American Spectator characterized Hillary as the “Lady MacBeth of Arkansas.”

The deep-seated antipathy to Hillary in that campaign was part of the right’s inability to accept women in the workplace. The idea of a professional woman disturbed Republicans. The year before, the party had gone after Anita Hill for speaking out about workplace sexual harassment from her boss, Clarence Thomas. “Are you a scorned woman?" asked Republican Senator Howell Heflin, in a line that became synonymous with apparent Republican discomfort with the role of women in the workplace. Watching the all-male Senate panel grill Anita Hill encouraged women across the country to run for political office. Amongst them was a state legislator, Patty Murray of Washington, who was told that she couldn’t succeed in politics as a “mom in tennis shoes,” but she used that as her campaign slogan.

Despite Republican opposition, women gained made huge strides in politics that year. President Bush said, “This is supposed to be the year of the women in the Senate. Let's see how they do. I hope a lot of them lose." His wish was unfulfilled. The vicious Republican attacks on Hillary, and the impression that the Republican Party was opposed to women’s rights, alienated women voters and helped to motivate women to turn out to the polls for Democrats. The record level of women who came out to vote in 1992 not only elected Bill Clinton but turned out in record numbers “helping to elect 24 new women to the House and five to the Senate, the largest increase in history.” That election went down in history as “the year of the woman.” Twenty years later, that “mom in tennis shoes,” Senator Patty Murray, helped to usher in another “year of the woman” when she helped to elect five new Democratic women in the Senate.